Oscar Wilde Quotes
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Lots of people act well, but few people talk well. This shows that talking is the more difficult of the two.
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When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy.
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Alone, and without any reference to his neighbours, without any interference, the artist can fashion a beautiful thing; and if he does not do it solely for his own pleasure, he is not an artist at all.
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Religion is like a blind man looking in a black room for a black cat that isn't there, and finding it.
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The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.
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The gods are strange. It is not our vices only they make instruments to scourge us. They bring us to ruin through what in us is good, gentle, humane, loving.
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We live in an age that reads too much to be wise, and that thinks too much to be beautiful.
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Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
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All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. To be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be inartistic.
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No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.
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Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. If the cave-man had known how to laugh, History would have been different.
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Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds exactly the same opinion.
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The best way to make children good is to make them happy.
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It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is absolutely fatal.
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The past could always be annihilated. Regret, denial, or forgetfulness could do that. But the future was inevitable.
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To be entirely free, and at the same time, entirely dominated by law, is the eternal paradox of human life that we realise at every moment.
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There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.
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The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation.
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There was purification in punishment. Not 'Forgive us our sins,' but 'Smite us for our iniquities' should be the prayer of a man to a most just God.
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To believe is very dull. To doubt is intensely engrossing. To be on the alert is to live, to be lulled into security is to die.
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Comfort is the only thing our civilization can give us.
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Realize your youth while you have it. Don’t squander the gold of your days, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless failure, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the vulgar. These are the sickly aims, the false ideals, of our age. Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing.
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It is only by not paying one's bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes.
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Memory... is the diary that we all carry about with us.